Monday, April 2, 2007

Bike Share

Illustration completed for a series of images as a pitch to re-brand Bike Share. Bike Share started off well with great enthusiasm in its goals and directions but as of this year is out of funding so will not be available in Toronto. Our focus was to display Bike Share in memorable moments, specifically those awkard moments we all remember and when we are in them can laugh at, at least after.And of course we had to have some fun with this.One of those awkward moments caught on camera!

Nice hands and figures, though the one on the left is just a little James Jeanish--I can see a little influence there with the way you've been experimenting with coloring your pencil drawings on the computer, but that's a good thing at this point--it's good you're trying various ways of working to find one that best suits you--and its perfectly cool to have influences, ever overt ones as you develop your own style, and your own style creeps into every picture you do.

Things to watch out for, or be a little more observant of are: folds in fabric (these look a little starchy), slight details in anatomy--what are her feet doing as they dissappear behind that hand? Could she stand like that? With one shoulder so much higher than the other, would her breasts be parallel like that? your own body's a good reference for stuff like this--just look at where your nipples are in relation to one another when you raise your shoulder. Its ok to generalize stuff like knees--the shape of the leg on the guy in the middle is plausable, but you're barely getting away with that knee, the way you've colored it--it should be a little to the right.

Be careful of distortions like this--James Jean gets away with them because he really really knows anatomy. I couldn't get away with the stuff James Jean gets away with.

Also color-wise--what about light source? You don't HAVE to have a specific light source--norman Rockwell famously always had his figures illuminated from all sides, but without contrast everything grays out. You're pallette is nice, but you need more contrast in value.

Anyway, I know this is probably a school project under a tight deadline, and it's good work, but I was just thinking of ways that it could be awesome work instead.

Also the Nasir Jones painting is really nice. You have such great painting instincts! I love tthe way you painted the yellow over the red and let the red show through in places. I like the way you brought some of the yellow into the face, but I think if you just put a little more high key yellow or white in the face to give it more contrast in VERY sellect places for highlights (you could even experiment with sharpenning the existing highlings in photoshop). Also the arms don't seem attached to those sleeves. They look like they're behind his shirt instead of coming out of it.